Fuck the future and your ‘purpose’

Lately, as me and my friends move towards the A levels, i’ve been seeing more and more of them feeling anguish, struggle, uncertainty, anxiety about the future. There’s a longing, a clinging on to right now, when we’re free of the imagined troubles of working life. They seem to dislike the future, not wanting to meet it, yet they can’t help thinking about it. What will we do? What should i do with my life? With my future? What’s the point of scoring As if i don’t know what to do with my future? This post is meant to hopefully give them an answer to all these troubles.

The reason for this clinginess, this desire to avoid the future and hang on to the present, right now, is because we fear the future. We imagine the future to be worst off than the present. Why else would we avoid it? We always look forward towards something better, and shy away from something worse. Even though we may not consciously project our imagine our future, even though we may not logically know what our future will be, we unconsciously already pictture the future to be bad. We hear stories from society, newspapers, parents, about how working life is so stressful, full of back-stabbing and crap, and the shitty thing is we buy into all of it.

The next problem is when we take in all the assumptions of the future that society throws at us. Assumptions such as “YOU MUST HAVE A PURPOSE IN LIFE”, “EVERYONE HAS A PURPOSE IN LIFE”, “YOU MUST KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE”…and when we accept these, we unconsciously also accept that “EVERYONE KNOWS THEIR PURPOSE. YOU OUGHT TO, TOO”, “YOU WILL DIE/SUFFER IF YOU DON’T HAVE A PURPOSE IN LIFE”, “IT IS WRONG TO NOT HAVE A PURPOSE IN LIFE”. You take in all these assumptions and assume that because society takes them to be true, they must be true for everyone. Not many people talk about this, so you assume that you’re the only one having this problem. You make “findin a purpose” right and not having one, “wrong”.

So, as we seem to move closer and closer to all these future projections, these problems become more and more glaring. Right now, i’d just like everyone who has these problems to take the step of courage and consider what my opinions on these are.

1. The future doesn’t exist. It may be better, it may be worse. No one knows! All you know is society bombaring you with their realities of it but you have no idea if its true for you or not. Even if what they say is true, what can you do about it? Worrying about it won’t help, avoiding it won’t help because you can’t avoid it. All you can do is to accept that whatever will be, will be. Relinquish resistance, stop trying to avoid or delay it. Be at peace with whatever may come, and the only way you can be at peace is to focus on this moment right now. Whenever you project yourself into the future and think about it, whether unconsciously or consciously, you’re trying to deal with something that you can’t! How can you deal with a problem that doesn’t exist? The only thing that is real, that exists, is now, the present moment, so put your full attention and focus on it. When the future comes, it will come through Now, you will face the future in the present, and when it comes, deal with whatever comes.

But seriously, you have absolutely no idea what the future holds for you, so why let yourself be so bothered by it? Who’s to say the future isn’t more fun, more enjoyable, happier than it is now? Why make so many silly assumptions based on what others think and trying to make you think? When people try to convince me that life in the future is going to be hard/stressful, in my mind, i’m going “fuck off, my future is goin to be way more fun and happy than it is now. you can have the unhappy future, i’m going to have the happy one.” And if they try to convince me by talking, i’m guessing i would probably tell them “i don’t believe in that.” That’s what i did when my mom told me how we needed to brush our teeth or else they will decay. I told her,”i don’t believe in that.”

I know, some of you may be going, “just because you believe in it doesn’t make it true”. Well, i believe in the law of attraction, and basically, it means that you get what you believe. There is evidence for it, scientifically, in the form of placebo, the phenomenon where people’s illnesses suddenly go into remission when they believe that htey are cured even if they haven’t.

2. The next point deals with the assumptions that we blindly take in. Who told you you NEEDED to have a purpose? Why can’t you not have one? Okay, so people tell you that you must have one. But you don’t know your purpose right now, and do you think that worrying about it, thinking about it, will lead you to your purpose? Why not just accept that you don’t know what your purpose is right now, and it may or may not come to you. For now, your purpose is to live your life as it is, in the present moment, not to worry about the future because worrying does absolutely shit. Alternatively, you can go one step further and accept that you may not have a purpose at all.

Sometimes, you get that argument…if you have no purpose, you may as well die now…i would say…not really. Babies, children don’t seem to have any “purpose”. Their purpose, as far as they are concerned, is to be completely present and enjoy whatever there is now, and they seem happy enough. I would think that your purpose should be something you love to do, something you feel enthusiastic and happy about doing, rather than something you think you should be doing, something you think makes a big contribution to society or whatever. If you do what you are happy doing, what you feel you should be doing, then you will naturally contribute in your own way. On the contrary, if you THINK that you should be doing something and then you do it, you’ll end up unhappy and burden the world with your complaints, unhappiness, and resentment.

I believe that when people tell you that you ought to have a purpose in life, the true meaning to that is that you should live a life where you find meaning and happiness, doing something you like and love to do. This is in contrast to people who lead their lives according to what society tells them they should be doing, getting a job that society deems acceptable, not daring to do what they would really like to do, and basically living their lives like a machine. When you have a purpose, it means you take charge, you are in control, you do what you want and not what others tell you you ought to be doing.

Realise that there is NOTHING WRONG with not knowing your purpose or having a purpose. The only thing that sucks is when you live your life according to what people tell you. Stop needing to have a purpose! When you have a purpose, it should come naturally and spontaneously to you. You should innately, instinctively know what it is, rather than trying to think, analyze and figure out what it is. If you don’t know, be completely fine with it. Why take the insane route of trying to fight and figure out your purpose, a purpose that might not even exist, a purpose that exists out of the infinite purposes there are in this world? What if you have more than one purpose? What if your purpose changes from time to time? Fuck, are you seriously going to try to analyze and figure it all out?

Right now, this is my purpose: My purpose in life is to lead the happiest life i can lead, to become completely present, to inspire and teach others how to become enlightened in my definition of it. My purpose may change later, but for now, this is what i like to do. I like to help people, to inspire people, and to enjoy my life. So i make that my purpose. Oh, another part of my purpose is to not make the future a problem and to stay completely present and enjoy the present moment.